Advertising Advice from Starmedia

RSS Feed Homepage

Quiet On The Set
2008-04-15 04:42:00
With the wealth of marketing tools at our fingertips these days, the classics are often overlooked. It's true that radio is seeing tough times these days, and billboard ads are not the most cost-effective means of advertising for most people's purposes. Video, on the other hand, has a myriad of purposes, from corporate videos to television commercials to more unique purposes like presentations and as part of a website.When beginning work on any sort of video production, it is a good idea to think of the "why" of your project before you start looking into the "how." An advertising agency is able to help you decide what the best approach is to your video. Should it be one minute or 5? Should it be serious or whimsical? Should it be informative or slick...or both?The other point to balance in video work is to find creative people who can give their unique aesthetic when that is the look required, or to find people who are capable of recreating a particular look when the need arises t...
More About: Quiet

Internet Advertising For Women
2008-02-20 22:57:00
Women under 30 are outpacing their male counterparts in internet usage, although the men are using the internet more intensely (longer periods of time). Women have historically been targeted by marketers in completely different ways than their male counterparts, that is for products or services they are selling to women. Advertising is one of society's prime indicators of its own desires and capacity for these desires, the container in which these desires are held. One can look at the evolution of female-targeted marketing to see what was being placed in this container. As women's images of themselves changed, so too did the advertising directed towards them. Early to mid-century advertising portrayed women as unemployed, incapable of effective decision making, passive, emotional, dependant. Now most female targeted advertising is primarily about empowering women, or freeing them in some way. A Swiffer? frees them from the tyranny of dust, this new mascara frees them of clumps...
More About: Women , For Women , Internet

StarMedia Case Study: Scharf Group
2008-02-06 14:54:00
At the StarMedia Advertising Agency, the client is always the number one priority. We've worked with clients regionally, nationally and internationally. Through the relationships we foster with our clients, we act as brand and advertising stewards, consistently and creatively producing solutions so that our clients can reap the results. The Scharf Group LLC is an independent financial services company operating out of Philadelphia. Founded by Glen Scharf in 1995, The Scharf Group LLC was born out of a desire and perceived need for a smaller more personalized brokerage house. Glen had worked for years at the Prudential Philadelphia branch and realized that the large firms were too large to put the client?s needs first. Rather than servicing a small fish in a big pond, Scharf created a situation wherein all clients are big fish and the pond is more of a carefully tended aquarium, where a client is better protected and educated for the exigencies of the modern business world. Starm...
More About: Study , Case

Internet Marketing Plowing Through
2008-01-30 17:19:00
The sub-prime mortgage squeeze has hit hard in the US. The dollar is falling. The recession that economic soothsayers have been warning about is now here. What does this all mean for advertising? Like tall ships preparing for an oncoming storm, companies begin looking for what they can throw off as ballast so they stay afloat. Historically, marketing spending has been one of the areas that is often seen as frivolous or easiest to trim from a company's budgets.Not to worry though, for all you lovers of television advertising, Paris Hilton will likely be writhing against soapy vehicles, burger in hand for a while yet. 2008 will propel forward with three big ticket quadrennial events that will surely have advertisers humming: America's presidential election, the Olympics in Beijing and the European football championship. That would make 2009 the year that advertisers feel the cut most deeply.Experts are claiming that while the roles of more traditional forms of advertising (TV, prin...
More About: Marketing , Internet , Internet Marketing

StarMedia Case Study: CHRD
2008-01-15 21:15:00
At the StarMedia Advertising Agency, the client is always the number one priority. We've worked with clients regionally, nationally and internationally. Through the relationships we foster with our clients, we act as brand and advertising stewards, consistently and creatively producing solutions so that our clients can reap the results.Here is the Case Study of the Cree Human Resource Development, one of our clients we have been working with in the last year; The unemployment rate for the Cree population is around 25%, out of a labor force of 7,500. This number is particularly high, well above the federal and provincial averages. This unemployment rate doubles in the 15-24 age demographic. The CHRD was designed to give the Cree, especially this large segment of jobless youth greater access to the proper resources to find employment. The CHRD wanted to enliven their materials. At Starmedia, our job was to create a strong visual product, well organized for ease of use. With th...

Butting Out - The Merits of Not Getting in the Way
2007-12-04 22:52:00
Facebook is fast becoming as central to social networking as actual conversation once was. If you are feverishly checking your account every five minutes, then you know of what I speak. As our lives become more and more segmented, it?s good to know that at least you have pictures of that guy who ate paste in the back of class in grade 3, and are privy to his exact thoughts on his new Mitsubishi Gallant How exactly does Facebook intend to make money off this type of information? Because apparently they intend to make a lot of money. The recent Microsoft purchase of a 1.6% share of Facebook for $241 million, values the company at a whopping $15 billion! Facebook has unveiled a new advertising system called Socialads. Facebook founder-cum-Harvard dropout, Mark Zuckerberg, says it will revolutionize advertising by ?getting into the conversations? between people. Essentially, what Facebook has is an ever expanding list of potential consumers, and their specific interests, w...
More About: Pay Per Click , Facebook

Madison Avenue, Portland?
2007-11-22 22:58:00
Gone are the glory days of Madison Avenue . Ad men, as they called themselves, thought up catchy slogans between puffs of cigar smoke while enjoying a three martini lunch of porterhouse steak the size of a catcher?s mitt. Madison Avenue was a catchall phrase connoting North American advertising at large. Now when referring to advertising as a whole you could just as easily mention Portland or Boulder as locations where much of the best ad work is done. Those headier days of advertising were ushered out as the privately owned agencies went public and absorbed a lot of other agencies, turning into huge global conglomerates? And this was just the shift of modern mid century advertising to post modern late century advertising. A new study by IBM Global Business Solutions states that the advertising world will see a more dramatic shift in the next five years than it has seen in the last 50. And these figures are conservative. The study claims that over the past two years onlin...

An Evolving Media
2007-10-30 15:00:00
In case you haven?t heard, the Internet has gone local. Local online search is now second only to email for the most common online activity. Unfortunately Mom and Pop seem woefully unprepared for this shift in marketing. Still hewing closely to the 20th century marketing model, local businesses are investing primarily in print and broadcast marketing, allocating less than 5% in Internet marketing. By 2017, forecasters predict that local businesses will be investing close to 25% in their Internet marketing campaigns. But, you don?t have to wait that long. All the resources and tools are out there to help you get started on your Internet campaigns. You don?t have to be a computer whiz, as long as you hire a forward thinking company that specializes in Internet marketing to enact your campaign for you. One of the most important aspects of Internet marketing is the actual website design itself. Your website is the portal connecting potential customers to your product and company...
More About: Media

A Collection of Details
2007-10-12 20:05:00
Everyone knows the expression, "God is in the details." The idea, as heretical as it may be to make this topical jump, applies just as well to advertising and, especially, to website design. It's amazing how often I've gone to websites and been thwarted by some aspect of the design, actually hindered from doing what I need to do on the site. In most cases, this clumsiness of design directly results in an inability to, say, make a purchase or find a product or store. Don't people realize this? If I go to a website and can't find out how to telephone the company, or if a page takes 5 minutes to load, then the bottom line is that I will probably leave the website (and the product) and never look back. Usability carries over into things like aesthetics and good writing too. A website that looks thrown together, text overrun with bad grammar and spelling mistakes, broken links and outdated information -- these things show that you don't actually care about your customers' exper...
More About: Details

A Method to Your Madness
2007-09-28 15:12:00
There's a key ingredient to every top-notch advertising agency: it's all about process. As boring as it sounds, it's not enough to just be talented and creative; you've got to have a method to your madness. Sure, creativity is key, and no one's going to be interested in an agency with a meticulous work-flow but uninspired ideas. But consistency is very important if you want satisfied clients and, especially, repeat clients. When you meet with people for the first time and set out to discuss their needs, you have to give them a solid idea of just how it is you'll go about meeting those needs. Well, you don't just have to give them an idea; you have to be able to carry it out. Then client wants to know that you're not just going to sit around at your desk until a idea occurs to you. They want to see that you have a process, a system by which you can guarantee consistent, first-class results. It's like in science class, when you learned about the "scientific method" ...
More About: Madness , Method

Form for the Sake of Function
2007-09-14 19:47:00
Like many of my colleagues in graphic design, I spent a number of my formative years studying art at various educational institutions. For those of you who?ve never had the pleasure of studying art in school (at a ?higher level,? in particular), I can tell you that a lot of time is spent immersed in critiques. In an art critique, the artist is extensively questioned by his or her peers, professors, visiting artists, and so on. A great deal of time is spent examining the work at hand, discussing its details, and arguing over whether or not it ?works.? Which is a difficult thing to quantify, incredibly subjective as it is. I suppose that there may be certain rules when it comes to art, but one of them is that all rules are meant to be broken, leaving us without much of a concrete framework to fall back on when discussing art and its effectiveness. Ultimately what it often comes down to is how well an artist can defend his or her methods and rationale, and how well he or she can conv...
More About: Form , Function

My Boss Bought Cheap Chairs and Now My Back Hurts
2007-07-20 17:05:00
I used to have a good chair. It had 3 levers on it that would stabilize my lumbar and spine. It was smoky grey and I called him Chester. It is true that Chester had some holes in him and a cigarette burn or two but he was comfortable and the wheels worked great.Then I left for the week-end, to live my real life, and when I returned to work on Monday Chester was gone. In his place was some piece of black crap with no personality. But then I said to myself, ?Hey, Chester had a great run but everybody gets old and maybe it was his time. I?ll try the new chair.? My new chair is crap. Oh yes, it looks expensive, with its mesh covering, but it was a bargain stool of pain.Within a week I started to have lower back pain and when I complained, management told me that it was because I stopped going to the company gym and was getting a gut. Can you believe that? Now I was the problem, not the cheap chair that only has ONE lever. One lever! The thing just goes up and down. I?d rather just sit o...
More About: Boss , Back , Chairs , Cheap

Everyone is bored at work? except for elves
2007-06-12 19:59:00
Unless you are Santa Claus and your employees are toy building elves, it seems unlikely that there aren?t moments when your employees are bored at work. The sad reality is that the majority of employees aren?t being motivated well enough. With the saturation of online businesses and small companies springing up, business owners need to be aware of the positive benefits of having a well motivated and hard working staff. While this fact may seem obvious to the business owner or president, websites like ?i-am-bored.com? and ?bored.com? only serve to prove that something is missing in the work environment.Statistics Canada states that many work absences are directly correlated with instances of boredom at work. When workers are completing repetitive tasks or do not feel challenged enough in their work environment, they become more prone to taking personal days. This lowers your business? return on investment (ROI) and deceases your opportunity to get the most done in a day.Although, as ...
More About: Work , Bored

The Advertising Experiment
2007-05-31 15:57:00
This is Mike.Mike is a talented graphic designer here at Starmedia.Every now and then Mike gets frustrated.So, I was thinking to myself that graphic designers are sort of behind the scenes and people often don't even think or appreciate the amount of work that designers have to put in to make customers look good. They deserve to get some attention. Ergo, I thought I would involve one of them in my new hair-brained experiment. One of my coworkers, Jimmy Jet, drew this picture of Mike, our designer, during one of our daily meetings and I thought, can you make an ad out of anything? Let's find out.Therefore... the Advertising Experiment 2007.How to participate: You take this drawing of Mike and do whatever you'd like to it to turn it into an advertisement. You can advertise anything you'd like, but it has to look good and serve to potentially sell your product or service. Submit a tagline to go below this drawing or create Mike a slogan if you'd like. Be creative! It can say anyth...

I Owe, I Owe, It?s off to Work I Go
2007-05-29 16:29:00
(Image thanks to www.crazy-jokes.com)There's a great blog series going on called THE WORKPLACE SURVIVAL DIALOG. This is my contribution to that interesting subject. Check it out and feel free to add your own! :)Well I was planning on writing a daring and often dramatic article about the workplace and how work ethics have drastically dropped over the last few days, but I got a bit bogged down with strange and unnecessary statistics which, while amusing, did not really back up my entire strongly worded thesis. So I?m going to play it ?cool? and just discuss the issue lightly and see what happens. Hopefully if I ask a question it will intrigue you all enough to add your own thoughts and experiences because I imagine most of you can relate. So here goes: How often do you take a personal day from work? I know I said I wouldn?t bog this article down with statistics, but these few were just too good to resist. Thank you to Statistics Canada.Warning: For all you fellow workaholics out ther...
More About: Work

I Love NY
2007-05-24 21:59:00
*Logo curtosy of www.wikipedia.org*New York City -- A place renowned for being incredibly expensive, dirty, loud, over-populated and? magical? As terrible as New York can sometimes be viewed, it will always be one of those magical places where possibilities are endless. It is this positive aspect of New York that is evoked through their tourism logo, which has been around since 1977 and continues to stand as an emblem of the great branding potential in positive thinking and simplicity.When the state of NY hired advertising agency Wells Rich Greene in 1977 to develop a marketing campaign for NY State, I doubt that anyone realized the potential of positive thinking, except for perhaps Milton Glaser, who designed the ?I Love NY? logo and did it for free. This friendly logo has now not only branded New York as a place that everyone loves or should love, but as also gone down in history as a significant part of our pop culture. Celebrities like Robin Williams proudly wear the ?I Love NY?...

?Rrrrrred! Red is the Color of SEX!?
2007-05-24 17:20:00
Have you seen the movie Kinky Boots? If you haven?t, you absolutely should. My favorite scene in that movie is where the main character, a drag queen, shouts down to the small town boot-factory workers below: [looks horrified] ?Burgundy. Please, God, tell me I have not inspired something burgundy. Red. Red. *Red*. *Red*, Charlie boy. *Red*! Is the color of sex! Burgundy is the color of hot water bottles! Red is the color of sex and fear and danger and signs that say, Do. Not. Enter. All my favorite things in life.? (Quote thanks to IMDB.com)Advertising is about standing out. It?s about screaming out to the world: ?Look at me! Choose me!? and having people sit up and notice. There?s a cleverness and creativity in an advertising campaign that you just have to appreciate. It gets us to choose one product over another. It gets us to talk about one company instead of another. There?s power in advertising. At least there used to be.So where did the passion go? With the onslaught of millio...
More About: Color

Multiplicity? Multiplicity? Multiplicity?
2007-05-18 15:35:00
Warning: I am upset.Warning: This will be a rant.What is wrong with our society? I mean, COME ON!Recently it has been brought to my attention that creative advertising firms both in my own country of Canada as well as abroad lack the integrity and intelligence to write their own copy and have instead been directly copying mine? and I mean directly. Oddly enough this subject was brought up the other day in a discussion on Blogcatalog and I replied saying how I sorry I was to hear that fellow bloggers were having their original copy duplicated in other blogs of a similar community without any credit. Later on that day I performed a routine Copyscape check on the websites of the design company I work for and found that the copy I had written for our business? websites had been ripped off and in some cases, even our designs!After consoling our weeping designers (I am so sorry Mike, Jai, Marius and Caleb!) who spend hours coming up with their own creative designs for both our websites an...

Marketing with the Muppets
2007-05-16 17:18:00
If you?re staring with a smile at the pictures in this blog post, then you are a prime candidate for joining me on this discussion. What makes the Muppets a popular advertising image? As today is the anniversary of Jim Henson?s death, a colleague suggested that our blog should discuss how Henson?s Muppets have been successfully used throughout the years in a number of advertising campaigns including Ford?, Pizza Hut?, Denny?s?, Post? and many more. It?s an interesting thought. What is it about those cute little puppets that make us open our wallets in delight?Familiarity. The Muppets are recognized worldwide. Popular television shows such as The Muppet Show, Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock were highly rated and syndicated. The Muppets were in books, on television, in the movies and on our lunchboxes. They defined a generation and more than that, they made us laugh. Whether it is subconscious or not, we trust the Muppets. If you can use your advertising icon to create a feeling of tru...
More About: Marketing

The TAGGING Game
2007-05-15 16:59:00
Tagged ? What a Fun Filled Notion!Before I begin, I want everyone to know that with all of the things that I learn every day; the Internet always finds some new way to impress me. I know, I do impress easily, but you know? So, since this is an advertising advice blog and I?m supposed to be giving all of you advice on the advertising world, we?re going to learn something new together. Maybe this is SEO friendly. Either way, I think I?m going to enjoy it.Tagging ? what is it and how does it work? I?m not exactly sure yet and so in the effort of education and heck, a little fun I am going to play this tagging game and see what happens. If it works and we a) have fun and b) link up and form a community then I suggest it to all of you. I suggest it anyway.I don?t want to screw up the rules (since they are important) so I copied these from cymru66 (hi Steve!) who tagged me first ? check out his blog:1. The person who was tagged will just have to make an introduction and link back to who t...
More About: Game

Why Super Cala Fragilistic Expialidocious would make a terrible company nam
2007-05-11 20:22:00
It is possible that this post might come up as more of a rant than an advice column, but please sift through my complaining to truly hear the real message ? a long business name can ruin your advertising campaign and lose you money.I admit that coming up with a business name is a tricky endeavor, especially when there are so many businesses out there that have probably already taken the short and catchy names like Pete?s Plumbing and The Plumb Guy, but just because someone suggested that Plumbing with Pete the Plumb Guy would be a great company name does not mean you should go with it. Here?s why?Logos rarely if ever look good when your company has a huge business name. You should be able to manipulate the size of your logo to suit your advertising campaign and the longer your name, the bigger your logo will have to be. Imagine the cluttered-ness of your business cards. Oh my! Plus, logo designers will hate you. This I assure you of.You will want to abbreviate your company name to s...
More About: Company , Super , Make

Top 5 Reasons Top 5 Lists Are SEO Effective Copywriting
2007-05-11 17:09:00
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO as it has been dubbed by its followers, is like the Salem Witch Trials. Everyone is scrambling to find the perfect SEO plan and yet no one is exactly sure what SEO is or how it works. Instead we stand on street corners and scream out ?there?s an idea!? and the idea starts running. Okay, maybe it?s not as dramatic as all that, but there definitely is something enticing about search engine optimization that we love to hate. Yes, I am getting to my point. People have been spouting lately that having top five lists is SEO effective copywriting, so in the spirit of trial-and-error, here are my top five reasons why top five lists are SEO effective copywriting.1 ? People don?t like to read. The thought depresses me, but unfortunately in today?s technologically savvy society, there is just an over abundance of information hitting people every day (especially in advertising) and so to defend ourselves, we no longer care to read. If you want attention, you?r...
More About: Copywriting , Lists , Reasons , Effective

Building a Better Business Card
2007-04-23 22:55:00
Business cards are a fantastic marketing tool that no company should go without. To start, business cards provide you with the professional edge that you need when you are out of the office and in the world. Whether you?re on an airplane, at a restaurant or even among friends, business cards are easy to pass out to virtually anyone and even easier for them to keep and remember your business by. Keep in mind, everyone has a wallet.The key is professionalism. Your business card should embody the following elements:1) Well Designed Logo ? There?s no point to having a business card if you don?t have a logo to put on it. Human beings are extremely visual. Customers will have a much better chance of remembering your business if they identify it with a consistent logo that expresses your business.2) Information ? The address, phone number, email address, fax number and website of your business should be easy to find, easy to read and accessible on your business card. If your card doesn?t i...
More About: Business , Building , Card , Business Card

I Can Do It Myself! Do I Really Need to Hire Designers?
2007-03-27 17:37:00
Imagine a group of construction workers were asked to build an important office building, but they weren?t being supplied with any blueprints. The effect would be disastrous! Not only would they not know the specifications of the building, but there would also be mayhem as the workers each had their own way of working on the construction project. Although it is difficult to estimate the exact Return on Investment or ROI of a particular design campaign, it is possible to show the effects design has on advertising and how those effects do, in fact, change a business? ROI for the better.The two biggest problems that many businesses face when deciding on whether or not to spend money on design are:1) Shortage of Time2) Lack of MoneyNo one wants to ?throw away money? on something they believe they are capable of themselves. Unlike the medicine or law professions for example, design appears to be something even a regular Joe is capable of. With the ever expanding market of ?how ...
More About: Hire , Designers

What's Your Favorite Color?
2007-02-27 15:20:00
What?s your favorite color? It?s a question we?ve all been asked at least once in our lives and yet it remains one of those ever-changing notions. Very few people understand why they have certain alliances with colors. Whole research programs have been devoted to the study of colors and how they affect our moods and moreover, our drive to consumerism. Color Psychology dictates that human beings will respond faster and more intensely to colors than to words. Colors exist everywhere around us, and regardless of whether or not you?re aware of it, they have a strong effect on how we feel, how we work and what we want. People work harder in rooms painted with red and the majority of gyms have blue mats and paint to encourage motivation and add a calming influence. There are colors, however, with negative aspects. For example: orange is positive when used in small amounts, but it is also statistically one of America?s least favorite colors.As such, serious time and effort should go into p...
More About: Favorite

What the heck is SEO anyway?
2007-02-27 15:14:00
The Internet has come a long way since the days when we thought it was absolutely astounding that we didn?t have to walk through deep snow in the winter to send out letters to our grandmothers, friends and parents. Now everything in our ever-growing society has some online connection and the Internet has become a saturated and complicated place for a newbie website owner. Yes, I am getting to the point, which is SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, but before we get into the nitty gritty of what that means for you and your website, let?s first start with the simple (perhaps stupid) question of what is a search engine and what does it do?Search engines allow you, as the user, to find what it is you are looking for online. One of the most popular search engines out there right now is Google; however there are some other larger options such as: Yahoo, Altavista and MSN. Search engines operate by using a program which sends out ?robots? to find all of the websites that have t...